May 13-14

So we were SUPPOSED to have our day off from the 4 big kids on Monday but the weather was less than enthusiastic. So we switched our outing days. Which made for a bit of a mad scramble to get things ready Sunday night.

So what to do, what to do? Well… get out and about first off… We took a nice walk down the main road our lane is off of and worked our way through writing down the names of the streets we saw along the way. The boys now know the short hand for Lane, Drive, Road… oh and Emanuel and Trinity showed off their skills at recognizing street signs.

Walking with mini bubble break

Checking out ants

Afterwards we had some celebratory bubbles from a walk well done!

BUBBLES

I have to say there are some beautiful flowers out and about now!

The kids called this the caterpillar tree

Daffodils

I just love the colours on these!

Trinity has been hard at work with her new workbooks from Izzy and Henry. She is in love with workbooks… as long as they aren’t too heavy on what she calls the difficult stuff.

Diving head on

Such lovely colouring on her dot to dot

Our Mother’s day book for the day was No Time For Mother’s Day by Laurie Halse Anderson. I had each of the kids make a mini Mother’s Day card just like they did in class in the book.

Mother’s Day cards

I was showing the boys some handwriting as an introduction of something we plan on covering in the fall. Gavin took initiative and copied his name from what I had shown him.

Gavin

Leave it up to Echo to add some cuteness to our day as well!

Colouring

Attempting a summersault

So Tuesday was our one kid extravaganza… first a visit with Bree (Echo’s Godmommy don’t you know?) at her work – Caribou Coffee…

With her Godmommy

Such a big girl

Then the traditional groping of the yarn at JoAnn’s… where Echo found an adorable headband!

Checking out the sunroof in Nana and Baba’s car

The headband… not bad for a dollar

Pinwheel!

We went to the nearby mall to make use of a Victoria’s Secret freebie coupon and wandered around letting Echo see what caught her fancy. Late lunch at Zantigo and we were well relaxed and pleased with our day, making it home well before our 4pm curfew. The other 4 had a grand time at the zoo with Nana and Baba, seeing critters and having a picnic!

Lunch out

It was nice

Enjoy the pictures! I actually had the chance to wear my special dress that I bought way back when with my Christmas funds!

I need to do some rather more posed images

Me and my Baby

Just us girls… note the lovely RED lippy! Thanks for the help on that one Bree!!

Just need to learn how to make Victory Rolls!

May 11-12

So the weekend was a bit of a rollercoaster. Trinity finally had her family birthday party and of course the 12th was Mother’s Day. BUT Ken also had a soccer game on the 12th and we had a couple last minute errands to run as well… boo monkeys.

Our new soccer ball (used, new to us)

Girls together

We had an early birthday party starting at 11am where Trinity finally got to wear the dress we picked up the day we celebrated with the Novaks. It is a size 6 so long now but she will be able to wear it forever!

So grown up

Love her hair… maybe Rapunzel for Halloween?

We had a Strawberry Shortcake themed party! We got an adorable cake but only Party City had our theme in stock!

Strawberry Shortcake

Cake

Lunch!

Presents

I think she had an amazing time and after we said good bye to cousins and family we said hello to newly moved here friends Izzy and Henry, 4 year old  twins. (non identical) They are Ken’s friend Matt’s boys. They are so much fun, we are already working on some more playdates! We definitely ended the night with 5 tired out kids!

The twins (Henry back)

Izzy and Echo

Little kids everywhere

Matt

Which leads me to Mother’s Day. It was really different not being in our own little family unit home and celebrating a day that is really not a full on holiday! But I did get to sleep in. We had a bit of a rush rush as Ken needed his soccer equipment and then had his game but we did get out and about as a family.

Sitting slightly impatiently waiting

The kids gave Nana her handmade card and were so pleased at her reaction. Ken’s first game in over a decade went rather well, they only lost by one (2-3) and he walked away with a scraped up knee and a little leg ache afterwards. So proud of him. We may go to the next game, it is local.

Trying on shoes

Quite the weekend errands and all!

We picked this massive ball up at Target

Those snapper type things… the ones you throw that make sound

The reasons I am a Mother in the first place

So sorry this took so long… videos are apparently harder to upload for us since some youTube update occurred. Sorry for the delay!!!

May 8-10

Mid week and our 3rd walk… though my battery died early on in our play time we did run and draw and hear a woodpecker! It was supposed to rain but instead remained rather hot and overcast for the whole day.

Helpful siblings

A pretty big success… in an hour Ken’s mom managed to teach Zander to tie his shoes! I simply could not sit behind him and do it right handed so was having all sorts of issues teaching him myself.

All 3 days was a bit of a mad rush to make Mother’s Day cards… Trinity AND Echo each have two GodMommies, we have 3 Grandmas and one Great… add in the boys’ 3 GodMommies and that is A LOT of cards. Art for Kids came out with a how to draw bees and the boys thought they were perfect for cards… Bee-cause we love you!

Bees!

More cards

We have made ourselves some Photo Tulips from Activity Village HERE. Pictures to follow eventually… gotta get those pictures printed to glue in them.

We snuck in some puzzle time.

A bit of a tricky puzzle with its hologram shimmer

And Trinity returned to her first lapbook story to tell and retell it to any and all who would listen!

Are You My Mother?

The weather on Thursday was not walk worthy so we were busy with books and more. The dino of the day was a book instead of a specific dinosaur. A rather gruesome in a not so realistic way, book… Dino-Dinners by Mick Manning. Emanuel made a beautiful picture using more than a few of  the included dinosaurs.

Gory

Our Mother’s Day themed book was The Mother’s Day Mice by Eve Bunting. The kids made pictures from the story using their fingerprints…

Fingerprints

When the weather doesn’t work in our favour the creativity really comes out. Echo and Emanuel worked together to create themselves a substantial and impressive tower.

TOWER

And then Emanuel branched out in a solo endeavor and made a man.

Block Man

The twins made an acrostic poem using the word Mother! Very creative joint venture.

Poetry

And then we filled the bathroom sink and had our first trial run with our plastic egg and popsicle stick boat. We hope to make a few more all to test at a lake.

Test time

Friday we added in some cleaning for our schoolwork before Trinity’s party. Zander did an amazing job on the bathroom! But first we had our walk. It was a bit of a chilly morning so we wandered the neighbourhood instead of heading to the park. There is an amazing flowering tree on our street.

Flowers

One of the bike paths (we miss our sidewalks)

We had a very exciting completion – Trinity is officially done her FIRST lapbook – Are You My Mother? was a huge success!!! I am so proud of her. We are going to pick another book for next month, and then go from there.

Well done Miss T!

Reading the book to her sister

We made the tissue paper flowers the little girl in the story made her mother in the book Mother’s Day by Anne Rockwell.

Pretty

The afternoon warmed up nicely and with Daddy home sick we took our noisy selves back outside to play and run and burn some energy before dinner and bed!

Back out in the sun

Need a bigger soccerball!

We had a movie from the library that included a Dora Mother’s Day episode… Food With Friends.

With a freshly cleaned Fat Sheep as well!

What a lovely week, spring is REALLY here… time to enjoy it!

Such characters